


all I know

by mornen



Category: The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Childhood, Children, Dancing, Family, Fatherhood, Gen, Hope, Scars, Trauma, Wounds, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28198479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen
Summary: Oropher feels soft when he looks at Thranduil, softer than he imagined he would ever be. He was always like a stream, changing course, changing strength, coming to a halt, starting up again, tumbling two hundred feet down into a deep pool and going on again. His love waxed and waned like the moon, when the moon came.Now with Thranduil, he feels the only consistent love he has ever had. Thranduil stands with his hand to the moon, lilacs tumbling down his back, studying it like this is the first time he has ever seen it. It is not, but it is the first time he has asked. He starts to question the world. He asks questions to which Oropher has no answer. He says, ‘do you understand what I mean?’ And Oropher does, but that does not mean he has an answer.
Relationships: Legolas Greenleaf & Thranduil, Oropher & Thranduil (Tolkien)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	all I know

‘What is this thing?’ Thranduil asks. He stands in the night as the moon rises from behind the trees. It is wide and white, and already scarred. 

‘The moon,’ Oropher answers. Thranduil stares at it, and the moon is not enough of an answer, but it is the only answer Oropher has. In the moonlight, the beech trees gleam pale. The ground is covered with Lilies of the Valley. Thranduil steps barefoot through the forest with lilacs woven through his hair. He steps out into the clearing and holds his hand up in front of him.

Oropher follows close behind him. His feet make no sound on the damp moss. His clothes are silver-green, his cloak tangled like lichen. He keeps his hood drawn. The air is cool. His breath feels warm where his hood bounces it back against his cheek.

Beneath his hood, his ash grey hair is tangled with twigs and leaves. The moonlight catches on his silver lashes. He draws his hood higher. He feels soft when he looks at Thranduil, softer than he imagined he would ever be. He was always like a stream, changing course, changing strength, coming to a halt, starting up again, tumbling two hundred feet down into a deep pool and going on again. His love waxed and waned like the moon, when the moon came. He fought and cried and did not wed young, so his fate was strange.

Now with Thranduil, he feels the only consistent love he has ever had. Thranduil stands with his hand to the moon, lilacs tumbling down his back, studying it like this is the first time he has ever seen it. It is not, but it is the first time he has asked. He starts to question the world. He asks questions to which Oropher has no answer. He says, ‘do you understand what I mean?’ And Oropher does, but that does not mean he has an answer.

Thranduil turns to him. His eyes are wide. His hands are steady. There is no light he is afraid of.

‘Do you think,’ he says. ‘That we could ever reach it? If we built a ladder high?’

‘It is far beyond the tallest trees,’ Oropher answers. ‘It is above the tallest mountains.’

Thranduil’s hand drops.

‘I wish it wasn’t.’

***

Thranduil is like spring because he opens the world anew and wakes everything he can find. He speaks to trees, to flowers, to streams and birds. Some of them answer. He asks questions, building himself up like a tower to the moon.

He has many friends. He tastes the river and knows from where it came and where it will end. He can be anything but still. Oropher would have it no other way.

When Thranduil dances, he lifts his hands above his head. He spins, and flowers fall from his hair. His feet are light. He runs barefoot through the forest, dancing on the moss and grass and between the flowers. When he cuts his feet, he stops only for a moment to check that nothing is caught in his skin, and then dances again, not waiting to heal. Oropher does not know what this means.

***

In the autumn, Thranduil puts red berries in his hair – holly berries, choke cherries. He laughs in the cold morning in just a tunic, legs and feet bare, and his breath comes out in clouds like the steam rising from the river.

The sun rises, and the light turns the forest, the leaves, everything golden. Oropher puts gold on his eyelids.

‘You never forget wounds,’ he says to Thranduil, when Thranduil stands before him with a finger broken from rough play.

‘Never?’ Thranduil says. His finger is cast, splinted. Still he dances, and his hair spins around his neck, and his hands fly out, and the cast catches the golden light.

‘Never. But there are some you don’t speak about.’

Oropher never tells him what broke him, made him a forest fire, a widened river, a running stream, inconsistent, turning away from the long shadows of the night and the light of the day. How it was when he was caught away, lost in the shadows, held, and the pain in his arms, on his hands, on his tongue. How he cut himself free and ran away, and tried his best to be settled in the beauty of the forest, but how he still ached when the rain came, when snow fell. That was why he never lived with Thranduil’s mother.

Thranduil always seemed fine with this. He flitted between them and never asked about it. Sometimes he looked too long at Oropher, though, and Oropher knew that he was seeing the shadow that lay still on him.

‘Does it hurt?’ Thranduil asked when he was two hundred years old and he couldn’t keep the question inside of him any longer.

‘Yes.’

Oropher put golden leaves in his hair. Thranduil didn’t press. Not until much later, when they had run from their home, and Thranduil had seen pain, seen war. When he carried scars of his own – like a white thread around his neck.

Then he sat with Oropher and kissed his hands and wept, but there was nothing to be done. So they danced in the forest, though neither would ever be healed, not completely. But so it is, you say. And you dance until your feet won’t hold you. You sing to your last breath.

***

Legolas brings in wild roses from the woods. His hair is braided down his back, three braids on each side of his head. He places the flowers in a vase, and their scent fills Thranduil’s room.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ he says, and he means everything, the whole world, even if he’s only seen so little of it. He is right though. It is beautiful.

Thranduil rests his hand on Legolas’s head, and Legolas smiles. He strokes Thranduil’s face. He touches his neck, his finger brushing for a moment across the scar.

But he does not ask from where he got it. He does not ask if it hurts still. Not yet. Not yet. He will someday, when he can’t hold the question in any longer. He will ask why Thranduil does not marry. Why his parents do not live together. All the questions that Thranduil has answers to and questions he will not, can not answer.

But not yet. Now he dances among the carved towers, barefoot, leaves and flowers falling from his hair. When he falls, he gets up again. When he cuts his finger on a thorn, he checks that there is no thorn left in the wound, and still he dances.

**Author's Note:**

> request on tumblr 💙


End file.
